LOCAL HERO TINA RIMER : Leading the Rally at Roosevelt High

They played with used rackets and some wore hand-me-down tennis shoes. Many were playing for the first time.

Yet, the Roosevelt High girls’ tennis team compiled a 7-3 record and finished second in its conference this fall, earning the team’s first visit to the city playoffs in 13 years.

There, Roosevelt tied top-seeded Franklin High school three matches to three before sophomore Jennifer Elizondo, 15, who never played tennis before last August, lost a closely fought two-hour battle in the quarter-final match.

Roosevelt’s success begins with a caring coach, Tina Rimer, who takes her job with her when she leaves the tennis courts. She even talked about her team when she visited her dentist. As a result, she received a surprise windfall and a big boost for her players.

“I said you won’t believe the kind of rackets we have to use from the district because the kids can’t afford to buy their own,” Rimer recalls saying to her Los Angeles dentist, Joel Reims. “They look like they cost about $4. They have the absolute lowest quality string. It doesn’t last. It breaks.”

Reims said nothing but later talked friends at the Los Angeles Tennis Club, where he was a member.

“I asked some of the fellows to open their lockers and if they had any rackets that they weren’t using,” Reims says. “And would they mind donating a racket to a good cause? Which is to this young schoolteacher who had enthusiastic kids but didn’t have rackets to play with.”

Reims collected mostly graphite rackets, with synthetic gut stringing, valued at $100 to $200.

“A week later I got a message on my answering machine,” Rimer says. “It was, Tina, come see me. I went to his office. I had no idea why. We go downstairs to his garage. He opens his trunk. There are 20 practically new rackets. Some of them barely had a nick on them.”

Rimer handed out the rackets in the fall of 1991. “The girls thought they had been using $100 rackets until they tried these. But they could feel the difference. Hit with these and it’s night and day.”

At the same time, Rimer solicited used shoes from Occidental College, where she also coaches. “The shoes that Occidental thinks are old, Roosevelt thinks are new,” she says.

“We started getting close to some teams that used to blow us out. We tied for third in the Southeastern Conference.”

This year the team improved again.

“Last year I was teaching them tennis. This year I was coaching,” says Rimer. “Two years ago if I had asked them what an alley was, they would have said a street behind my house.

“I’m very tough on them. I don’t say you come to practice twice a week and that’s OK because you live in the inner city. Someone else could have done it that way, but the girls wouldn’t be taking pride in what they did.

“One of the teachers has been at Roosevelt 24 years. She says the biggest reason we had so much success was that I set difficult but attainable goals. They reached up and grabbed them.”

The players agree.

“Opponents didn’t come onto the court as confident, saying, ‘It’s just Roosevelt. We don’t have to work,’ ” says senior Monica Cardenas, 17. “They saw the improvement. That made me feel very proud.”

This column tells the stories of the unsung heroes of Southern California, people of all ages and vocations and avocations, whose dedication as volunteers or on the job makes life better for the people they encounter. The column is published every other Monday. Reader suggestions are welcome and may be sent to Local Hero Editor, The View Section, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053.